Health Sciences and Human Services Department Report

Faculty Senate – January 18, 2008

  1. General Information
  2. Several faculty were funded by professional development monies to attend worthwhile educational conferences (see attached reports).
  3. Two well-qualified applicants for the hospital funded position were interviewed last week and selection decision is pending.
  4. Associate Degree Nursing Program (Mari Hunter)
  5. Nevada State Board of Nursing will be here in the next 2-3 months to survey program (will also survey certified nursing assistant program at the same time).
  6. Have 16 first year and 14 second year students.
  7. Work on the curriculum continues.
  8. Have about 200+ students that have been advised regarding AAS-Nursing Program
  9. As of 1/15 = 13 applications for Fall 08
  10. Issues that mightpertain to ability to enroll students:
  11. Faculty retention/recruitment to meet the goal of 24 students admitted to the program Fall 08.
  12. Student numbers are also fairly low especially in light of so many doing poorly on the NET (Nurse Entrance Test) and in overall prerequisite grades. This limits QUALIFIED applicants when numerical scores are derived from this data for admission.
  13. A final concern is the general slow down of hospital admissions to the acute floor limiting clinical experience and capacity. OB and ER are staying active, ICU is sporadic. Community health sites seem to be steady or growing.
  14. Using simulation more and more as a learning option for not only nursing but Rad Tech, and EMS students.
  15. Baccalaureate Degree Nursing Program (Margaret Puccinelli)
  16. Curriculum revision continues.
  17. Three students graduated in December from the program.
  18. Certified Nursing Assistant Program (Jo Dean)
  19. CNA course statistics for past several years are as follows:

Semester / # of
Classes / Students Enrolled / Students Completed / Completion %
2004-1 / 6 / 67 / 65
2004-2 / 5 / 63 / 57
2004-3 / 1 / 14 / 13
144 / 135 / 94%
2005-1 / 3 / 34 / 33
2005-2 / 3 / 32 / 29
2005-3 / 3 / 30 / 28
96 / 90 / 94%
2006-1 / 8 / 86 / 80
2006-2 / 2 / 10 / 10
2006-3 / 4 / 41 / 36
137 / 126 / 92%
2007-1 / 8 / 73 / 63
2007-2 / 1 / 8 / 8
2007-3 / 4 / 42 / 33
123* / 104* / 85%*
  1. *2007 statistics are incomplete at this time as one class of 15 students is still running. It is likely that all 15 will complete the class. If the entire 15 finish, as expected, the completion percentage for 2007 will be 97%.
  2. Current enrollment for Spring, 2008:

Elko:130-E01, evening = 13

130-E02, daytime= 9

130-E03, evening = 12

Pahrump: evening class =15 (with waiting list of 4)

Ely: White Pine HS class for 08 semester = 11

Ely: WhitePineCareCenter: class TBA if needed possibly in February

Winnemucca: Class TBA dependent on availability of an instructor

5. EMS Program (Karen Mowrey)

A. EMT – Basic Course is beginning on Wednesday January 15, 2008 with 22

students.

B. Will be offering several CPR Health Care Providers courses and Heart Saver

First Aid for Adults and Pediatrics.

  1. EMT – Basic and Intermediate Refresher Courses are available as internet

classes with skills competency evaluations and CPR recertification on April

26, and May 3, 2008.

  1. Radiology Technologist Program (Mary Doucette)

A. No report

  1. Human Services Program (Mary Ray)
  1. Enrollment and interest is good. Live and online substance abuse courses have 5 and 22 registered students respectively. Six individuals will be doing their practicums this semester and so far, 7 students are enrolled in the ethics course.
  2. Will be adding a non-profit management course in collaboration with Jeannie Rosenthal as a possible sequel to her grant writing course.
  1. Veteran’s Telehealth Clinic (Jill Connelly)
  2. The new program director for the Rural Health Office will be visiting the clinic on January 30th.
  3. The clinic is currently seeing 220 patients. The "outreach" component of the clinic is so called for the visiting nurse practitioner (currently twice a month, every other Wednesday). This addition has been a BIG hit - and is booking into March already.
  4. The telemedicine continues to be well utilized on the alternating Wednesdays; the Tandberg TV system is scheduled to be up and running next week, which will replace the older, smaller, slower (!!!!) pilot telemed TV system.
  5. Mental health is next on the agenda! Julia McDougal, CNP, is slated to begin face-to-face mental health evaluations on January 28th, pending referrals and scheduling of appropriate veterans. These appointments will likely be on Mondays, however, that is subject to change. Hopefully, some arrangement can be made for nursing students in the fall with the MH practitioner.
  6. Tentative NURS 157/158 clinical rotation has been schedules (15 students) for AAS-Nursing.

Submitted by: M. Puccinelli, PhD, RN

Chair, Health Sciences and Human Services Department

Professional Development Requirement

Tamara Gailey

Cooperative Testing

Associate Degree Nursing Annual Convention

Las Vegas, Nevada

November 2007

The privilege of attending the N-OADN convention this past November turned out to be a wonderful opportunity to gain new insight and ideas which could be applied as teaching strategies in the ADN instruction environment. One of the sessions which I attended and intend to use in an up-coming course I will be teaching was regarding Cooperative Testing. This particular testing method is designed to employ the “group process as a method for learning” (Jordan, McCloskey, and Pfaff, slide 3, 2007).

The objectives for Cooperative Testing (CT) not only focus on a decrease in stress for faculty, but also on improving success and understanding of nursing students. Within the process exists an opportunity for students to also gain a collaborative relationship with their student peers. Since implementing this testing process at the Carolinas College of Health Sciences, test review has become more of a collaborative process rather than a confrontational process, and the collaboration exists with the end result being a better understanding of the conceptbeing tested rather than another point on a test.

There exists a set of rules that all students must adhere to during this process, and these rules must be very clear as to avoid misinterpretation or confusion. After the rules are reviewed and understood by the students, the testing process may begin. The initial exam is given to the students who are given an established time frame in which to complete the exam. When students complete the exam, they are required to remain in the testing room; no bathroom breaks, no trips outside to make a cell call. While students wait for all to complete the test, they may read any books, magazines, etc.,other than text books or class notes. Once all have completed the exam, the students are placed in random groups of 3-5 individuals and the same exam is given to each group. The groups then have half the original allotted time to collaboratively complete the exam. Each group can only use the members of their group as resources. Points are added to the students’ original test scores depending on how well their groups performed on the exam. If the group scored an ‘A’ on the exam, then each student of that group received 5 more points on their individual exams, a ‘B’ would earn each member 3 points, a ‘C’ would be worth 1 point and below that no points would be awarded.

Student evaluations of this process were very positive. In evaluations that were given to students regarding CT, the students felt strongly that this format helped them to critically think, better understand the content, and aided in their communication skills. Faculty felt that this process allowed students to “feel more involved with their grades” and decreased the faculty/student conflict which was usually present during test reviews (Jordan et al, slide 29, 2007).

This spring in NURS 157, this form of testing will be used. This will be an optional form of testing, per suggestion of its authors. Assessment as to its success or failure will be made through focused questions in the course evaluations and the HESI exam which students complete at the end of the semester. I am looking forward to using this method and hope it will enhance the learning capabilities of the nursing students.

References

Jordan, L., McCloskey, J., & Pfaff, M. (2007). Cease fire! The battle of test review is over! (PowerPoint Presentation for 2007 N-OADN Conference)CarolinasCollege of Health Sciences.

Clinical Educator’s Workshop in the Radiologic Sciences

(Professional Development Report from Mary Doucette and Cherie Jaques)

With the Professional Development Committees help, we had the opportunity to attend the Clinical Educator’s Workshop in the Radiologic Sciences at MidlandTechnicalCollege in Columbia, South Carolina. The conference lasted two and half days. There were approximately 70 people in attendance.

The wonderful thing about this conference was the amount of experience of the different instructors in attendance. The experience levels ranged from months to over 30 years.

Everyone was sharing their gained knowledge, freely. Therefore, since we had many questions, we felt this was the best feature of this educational experience.

Below is a list of the sessions with a short summary of the content of each session.

1. What Every Instructor Should Know:

After much discussion, the class summarized the vital things we as instructors should know about the radiology program. Some of those facts pertaining to our program are:

  1. Some students will not make it
  2. You will never know everything
  3. Know your authority and use it
  4. Some students will lie
  5. Employers want/expect students with good affective behaviors.
  6. Know your policy and procedure manual
  7. Know how and when to communicate
  8. Set high expectations
  9. Stop problems early
  10. Realize your impact-Guardian of the Profession
  1. Traits of Effective Instructors and Technologists
  2. The students from the MidlandTechnicalCollege formed a list of 20 traits of an effective instructor
  3. From this class, Cherie had our students make a list of what they felt was important to make an effective instructor. Below is the list our students compiled. We distributed the list to our clinical sites.
  4. Compassion: lead by example, remember you were once a student
  5. Patient: Each site is different. All students learn differently
  6. Encouragement: Positive feedback is important.
  7. Constructive Criticism: Take students aside privately.
  8. Fairness: Equality and consistency
  9. Helpfulness: Don’t do the procedure-show the student how
  10. Attitude: Students are expected to leave their baggage at the door, the students expect the same.
  11. Professionalism: lead by example
  12. Motivating: positive words, eliminate boredom
  13. Communication: goes both ways

Effective teaching is: Having the ability to impart new ideas or information in a way the student understands it!

  1. Preparing The Student For Clinicals
  2. We learned some good ideas on how to eliminate potential problems at the clinical sites. Basically, we went over the different types of students and how to help the students adapt from the classroom to the clinical site.
  3. Integrating and Communicating Positioning Classes to the Clinical Sites
  4. We reviewed the different types, levels and barriers to communication.
  5. After this we listed some of the communication problems we had at our individual sites. From this list we made, Cherie and I listed some ways we could improve communication. Here is a list of items we are working on improving: syllabus(more detail), schedule for clinical rotations in each site, recognize student achievement, send introduction letters for students to the clinical rotation sites, get lists of standard procedures for each site.
  6. Futuristic Look At Clinical Education
  7. This was a review at the upcoming advances in radiology and how, as radiology instructors, we need to adapt.
  8. Different Strokes for Different Folks by Dr. Ridgill
  9. This was by far the best session. If we ever have the opportunity to bring this speaker to GBC, we should jump at it. She was awesome.
  10. We learned different communication styles, identifying our own communication styles, and how to communicate effectively.

From this observation, we learned how to communicate more effectively with the different types of people.

  1. Clinical Guidance Strategies For Clinical Instructors
  2. This was guidance for grievance issues. We learned techniques for giving students guidance and counseling.
  3. We have had a counseling episode since returning from this conference. We used the procedure guideline hints and felt it worked well for us.
  4. Maintaining Order in Clinical Education
  5. This was an overview of potential problems in the clinical area and how to resolve them.

In summary, this conference was very informative. We brought back useful information and have already implemented some of the knowledge gained. Thank you for the opportunity to enhance our educational awareness in the clinical process with Radiology Technology.

Respectfully submitted:

Mary Doucette and Cherie Jaques

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